Grease Monkeys

A flash of white light and Anzyl and Neil were standing in the main engineering of the USS Nexus. The several story tall neon cylinder of the Warp Core hummed and pulsed neon blue and red. 

"Captain on deck!" A Caitian engineer roared out. 

"At ease, at ease everyone, I'm just here to say…" and then Anzyl forgot he was talking to engineers, who were already back to work before he finished his first "At Ease".

They walked towards the warp core and stared at the tall, 30 story cylinder. It rose up 15 stories above them, and plunged down 15 stories below them. 

Then Anzyl saw what looked like a shadow of a massive spider monkey, swinging from station to station, it moved with such grace and precision, it used the walls, beams, and handrails like vines in a large tree. 

"That must be Tey'un…" he muttered, He emitted a high-pitched animal call, and the shadow swiftly descended with the agility of a lemur but towering like a giraffe.

Then the shadow landed barefoot on the glass ground of the engineering bay, and it stood up, and up, and up. 

"My word, an honest-to-goodness Na'vi in my engineering bay," Anzyl smiled.

It was a little-known fact among most races of the Federation that the Na'vi even existed, but Anzyl was rather familiar with their storied history.

—

In the parallel dimension, more commonly referred to as "The Mirror Universe", the humans of Earth discovered the forest moon Eywa'eveng, or "Pandora" as they named it, in their early spacefaring history. Pandora became one of the very first inhabited planets to fall to the Terrans of Earth. Bloody and horrific battles plagued the moon's history as the humans from Earth scourged the moon for its natural resources, deforesting its great trees and poaching the vast oceans, all while the native people fought with all their might, pushing back the humans of Earth, until Pandora became a lifeless husk of a moon.

However, in this dimension, the "Prime Universe", the Na'vi made first contact with the Andorians when a violent storm on Eywa'eveng disabled the Andorian research facility's holo cloaking field. Wholly unaware of the Andorians' need to sustain the Prime Directive, it was Tey'un himself who initiated first contact with the Andorian research team marooned on his homeworld. Smitten by the technological feats and demeanor of the strange fellow blue people from another world, Tey'un, along with his Tulkun (a sentient whale) "Bond Brother" Kayuli, left Eywa'eveng forever to travel the stars and graduated at the top of their respective classes from Starfleet Academy.

—

"You are Anzyl Praxas. Captain of the USS Nexus 6437-0, Scott Class…" Tey'un greeted nervously, displaying the personable skills of a savant with signs of Asperger's. The Na'vi was overall humanoid in appearance but stood tall at about 3 meters (9 feet), slim and slender, with smooth blue skin speckled with iridescent violet, a flat, bifurcated nose, large, round blue eyes, and feline-pointed ears. His raven-black hair was combed and pulled back in a large ponytail. He wore a gold and black Starfleet engineering uniform, with his meter-long feline tail whipping to and fro.

Noticing Tey'un's unease, Anzyl asked, "You're a little far from home. Are you doing okay?"

"I'm not far from home, not really. The site-to-site teleporters installed by the Tzenkethi let me get home and back here in seconds," he explained matter-of-factly.

Anzyl nodded, realizing he wasn't specific enough. "Your home planet, Eywa'eveng. Do you miss the trees? Do you get lonely without your connection to Eywa?"

Tey'un thought for a second, "No. The warp core reminds of Hometree, but less crowded, and there is enough to swing and grab on that I can move freely. If for some reason, I ever do get lonely, my Tulkun bond brother is on deck 35-40 in Cetacean Observations, but usually he's the one who's a lonely sassy fins." he explained, "And also there are no Palulukan (giant black panther) on board. I like that!" He happily nodded, 

"And you're breathing Ok?" Anzyl asked, tinted with concern for his health.

"Yes. I can breathe in an oxygen nitrogen environment for several hours, I only have to go take a nap and sleep in my nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, xenon, methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide atmosphere room every night."

"Well then I'm glad to have you aboard!" Anzyl smiled and welcomed him. 

He nodded unemphatically, turning back to his work.

"Oh yes one more thing," The captain paused before leaving the Engineering bay, "I was told to ask you about the 'Cyclonic Shield array', I heard it was your design and to ask you about it. I have never heard anything like it and would like you to explain it to me. Does it work?" 

Tey'un thought for a second, "Of course it works… I made it. But it's understandable you never heard of it before, it's only on this ship and we haven't even left the dry dock yet." 

 Anzyl realized he needed to reword his questions, "How does the Cyclonic Shield array differ from a typical shield array on a Starfleet vessel?" 

"Oh, easy." he then got rather excited and leapt across engineering to a console, showing the ship silhouette and surrounded by what looked like a round basket ball with fast moving longitudinal lines spinning around it. "The Cyclonic shield configuration utilizes longitudinally aligned deflector strips. These strips, set into rapid axial rotation, generate a high-velocity deflection field. This field, operating in a centrifugal manner, effectively redirects and disperses impacting objects, mitigating the direct force of collisions. This advanced shielding technology optimizes energy dispersion, minimizing potential damage to the ship's structural integrity."

"I majored in engineering in the academy and my early career days," Anzyl replied, "So what is a what now?" Anzyl asked thoroughly confused. 

Then a small voice coming out of a Jeffery's tube explained, "The shields spin fast, and knock things away, instead of taking the full brunt force." A little blue skinned alien, no more than 3 feet tall with long arms for their small size, said crawling out, it too wore a gold and black Starfleet uniform. "Like chucking a stick into a spinning fan, things just get knocked to the side with minimal damage to shields or the hull." 

"That's what I just said, you Syaksyuk (lemur)", Tey'un quipped as he hung upside down, fixing an air filter.

"Yeahhhh.." the little thing scoffed, "Hi captain," the little blue alien raised their hands to shake the captain's, "Call me Stitch, because you humanoids can't' pronounce my real name. Not enough tongues to enunciate it correctly." 

"Nice to meet you Stitch," the captain nodded, 

"I'm your number 2 engineer, but most of the time, I act as catboy's interpreter,"

"And my Txursum (small crawling crab) for those horrible tunnels." Tey'un said out loud, busy at work.

"And that too!" Stitch chimed turning to the captain, "Catboy can't fit in the Jeffrey's tubes, and my people on my home world are subterranean dwellers. I feel more comfortable crawling in side them than I do out." 

"Well nice to meet you both, and I have the rest of the ship to see, so good day." The captain nodded beside Neil.

"Bye…" Tey'un stated emotionlessly as Stitch bowed. 

The captain and first officer stood on the platform and Neil stated, "Sick Bay" and in a flash of white, were gone.